QA Engineer Contracts in England

Quality Assurance Engineer
UK > England

The median Quality Assurance Engineer daily rate in England is £515, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 23 June 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 412 475 464
Rank change year-on-year +63 -11 +142
Contract jobs requiring a QA Engineer 71 78 173
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 0.28% 0.21% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.22% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 57 160
10th Percentile £400 £300 £325
25th Percentile £413 £363 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £438 £600
Median % change year-on-year +17.71% -27.08% +16.22%
75th Percentile £622 £500 £738
90th Percentile £798 £545 £799
UK median daily rate £500 £438 £575
% change year-on-year +14.29% -23.91% +15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 3
10th Percentile £35.75 £24.98 £44.00
25th Percentile £36.88 £31.75 £44.38
Median hourly rate £40.00 £44.61 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.32% -10.79% +10.62%
75th Percentile £44.38 £59.02 £55.00
90th Percentile £46.25 £66.73 -
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £44.61 £50.00
% change year-on-year -10.32% -10.79% +10.62%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
England

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in England. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in England with a recognized job title 23,039 34,818 44,441
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.20% 92.86% 94.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 15,129 22,691 31,534
10th Percentile £294 £290 £313
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% +2.33%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £663
90th Percentile £750 £750 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,044 2,688 1,331
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £16.58 £20.00
Median hourly rate £28.88 £39.53 £44.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.94% -10.17% +80.66%
75th Percentile £58.70 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £74.39 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £27.36 £37.50 £44.00
% change year-on-year -27.03% -14.77% +76.00%

QA Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings that featured QA Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer in England.

Daily rate trend for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing QA Engineer in England over the 6 months to 23 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing QA Engineer in England.

Hourly rate trend for QA Engineer in England

QA Engineer
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing QA Engineer within the England region over the 6 months to 23 June 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London +47 50 £525 +16.67% 236
South West +47 7 £600 +877.68% 32
North of England +13 5 £450 +5.88% 76
Midlands +8 4 £431 +18.97% 36
East of England - 3 £450 - 48
South East +44 2 - - 102
West Midlands +11 2 £425 +29.77% 18
East Midlands +8 2 £476 +31.38% 18
Yorkshire +4 2 £550 +29.41% 25
North West +1 2 £400 -20.00% 45
North East 0 1 £450 +22.45% 6
QA Engineer
UK

QA Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England

For the 6 months to 23 June 2025, QA Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the England region featuring QA Engineer in the job title.

1 71 (100.00%) QA
2 52 (73.24%) Test Automation
3 33 (46.48%) Java
4 32 (45.07%) Agile
4 32 (45.07%) CI/CD
5 30 (42.25%) Python
6 24 (33.80%) Social Skills
7 22 (30.99%) Selenium
8 21 (29.58%) Test Strategy
8 21 (29.58%) Problem-Solving
9 19 (26.76%) Finance
10 17 (23.94%) AWS
11 16 (22.54%) Manual Testing
12 15 (21.13%) Azure
13 14 (19.72%) Postman
13 14 (19.72%) JavaScript
13 14 (19.72%) SQL
13 14 (19.72%) DevOps
13 14 (19.72%) Analytical Skills
14 13 (18.31%) API Testing
14 13 (18.31%) JMeter
14 13 (18.31%) End-to-End Testing
15 12 (16.90%) Regression Testing
15 12 (16.90%) Scrum
16 11 (15.49%) Non-Functional Testing
16 11 (15.49%) Banking
16 11 (15.49%) JIRA
16 11 (15.49%) Bash
16 11 (15.49%) Cypress.io
16 11 (15.49%) Test Scripting

QA Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (4.23%) Apache Airflow
1 3 (4.23%) Confluence
2 2 (2.82%) Apache
2 2 (2.82%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.41%) CMS
3 1 (1.41%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (5.63%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (2.82%) Payment Gateway
2 1 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 17 (23.94%) AWS
2 15 (21.13%) Azure
3 9 (12.68%) GCP
4 7 (9.86%) GitHub
5 6 (8.45%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (8.45%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (5.63%) Snowflake
7 3 (4.23%) AWS CloudFormation
7 3 (4.23%) dbt
7 3 (4.23%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (2.82%) Amazon EventBridge
8 2 (2.82%) Amazon SQS
8 2 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
8 2 (2.82%) Serverless
8 2 (2.82%) Tricentis Tosca
9 1 (1.41%) Azure Data Factory
9 1 (1.41%) BrowserStack
9 1 (1.41%) Power Automate
9 1 (1.41%) Power Platform
9 1 (1.41%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 2 (2.82%) Wireless
2 1 (1.41%) Network Security
2 1 (1.41%) SSH
2 1 (1.41%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (4.23%) BigQuery
1 3 (4.23%) Data Warehouse
1 3 (4.23%) PostgreSQL
2 2 (2.82%) Amazon Redshift
2 2 (2.82%) NoSQL
2 2 (2.82%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.41%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (1.41%) BusinessObjects
3 1 (1.41%) Crystal Reports
3 1 (1.41%) Delta Lake
3 1 (1.41%) DynamoDB
3 1 (1.41%) Looker
3 1 (1.41%) MS Access
3 1 (1.41%) Power BI
3 1 (1.41%) Relational Database
3 1 (1.41%) SAP Data Services
3 1 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 1 (1.41%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 22 (30.99%) Selenium
2 14 (19.72%) Postman
3 13 (18.31%) JMeter
4 11 (15.49%) Cypress.io
4 11 (15.49%) JIRA
5 10 (14.08%) Jenkins
5 10 (14.08%) LoadRunner
6 8 (11.27%) Cucumber
7 7 (9.86%) REST Assured
8 6 (8.45%) JUnit
9 3 (4.23%) Appium
9 3 (4.23%) Eclipse
9 3 (4.23%) Git
9 3 (4.23%) GitLab
9 3 (4.23%) TestRail
10 2 (2.82%) SoapUI
10 2 (2.82%) SpecFlow
10 2 (2.82%) WebDriver
11 1 (1.41%) Maven
11 1 (1.41%) TestComplete
General
1 24 (33.80%) Social Skills
2 19 (26.76%) Finance
3 14 (19.72%) Analytical Skills
4 11 (15.49%) Banking
5 4 (5.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 4 (5.63%) Public Sector
6 3 (4.23%) Manufacturing
6 3 (4.23%) Telecoms
7 2 (2.82%) Electronics
8 1 (1.41%) Back Office
8 1 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.41%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.41%) Front Office
8 1 (1.41%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.41%) Marketing
8 1 (1.41%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.41%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (12.68%) Playwright
2 8 (11.27%) FIX Protocol
3 5 (7.04%) REST
4 4 (5.63%) .NET
5 3 (4.23%) Great Expectations
5 3 (4.23%) Kafka
5 3 (4.23%) SOAP
5 3 (4.23%) Web Services
6 2 (2.82%) Node.js
6 2 (2.82%) pytest
6 2 (2.82%) RESTful
6 2 (2.82%) Spring Boot
7 1 (1.41%) GraphQL
7 1 (1.41%) JSON
7 1 (1.41%) Pandas
7 1 (1.41%) React Native
7 1 (1.41%) WebSockets
7 1 (1.41%) WireMock
7 1 (1.41%) XML
7 1 (1.41%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (15.49%) Product Ownership
2 8 (11.27%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 3 (4.23%) Virtual Team
4 2 (2.82%) Data Structures
4 2 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (2.82%) Educational Technology
4 2 (2.82%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.41%) Algorithms
5 1 (1.41%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.41%) Data Centre
5 1 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.41%) Derivative
5 1 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.41%) Management Information System
5 1 (1.41%) PKI
5 1 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 10 (14.08%) Linux
2 9 (12.68%) Windows
3 3 (4.23%) Android
3 3 (4.23%) Apple iOS
4 2 (2.82%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 52 (73.24%) Test Automation
2 32 (45.07%) Agile
2 32 (45.07%) CI/CD
3 21 (29.58%) Problem-Solving
3 21 (29.58%) Test Strategy
4 16 (22.54%) Manual Testing
5 14 (19.72%) DevOps
6 13 (18.31%) API Testing
6 13 (18.31%) End-to-End Testing
7 12 (16.90%) Regression Testing
7 12 (16.90%) Scrum
8 11 (15.49%) Non-Functional Testing
8 11 (15.49%) Test Scripting
9 10 (14.08%) Performance Testing
9 10 (14.08%) Security Testing
9 10 (14.08%) Software Testing
9 10 (14.08%) Validation
10 8 (11.27%) Root Cause Analysis
10 8 (11.27%) SDLC
10 8 (11.27%) Stress Testing
Programming Languages
1 33 (46.48%) Java
2 30 (42.25%) Python
3 14 (19.72%) JavaScript
3 14 (19.72%) SQL
4 11 (15.49%) Bash
5 9 (12.68%) C#
5 9 (12.68%) TypeScript
6 8 (11.27%) VB
7 3 (4.23%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.82%) Kotlin
9 1 (1.41%) Ada
9 1 (1.41%) Groovy
9 1 (1.41%) Scala
9 1 (1.41%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 8 (11.27%) SC Cleared
1 8 (11.27%) Security Cleared
2 6 (8.45%) ISTQB
3 4 (5.63%) Computer Science Degree
3 4 (5.63%) Degree
4 1 (1.41%) AWS Certification
4 1 (1.41%) AWS Certified Developer
4 1 (1.41%) CREST Certified
4 1 (1.41%) GIAC
4 1 (1.41%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (100.00%) QA
2 3 (4.23%) Accessibility
2 3 (4.23%) Data Quality
2 3 (4.23%) Software Quality Assurance
3 2 (2.82%) ISO 9001
3 2 (2.82%) WCAG
4 1 (1.41%) GxP
4 1 (1.41%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 3 (4.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 6 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 2 (2.82%) Terraform
3 1 (1.41%) Ansible
3 1 (1.41%) Grafana
3 1 (1.41%) HP Quality Center
3 1 (1.41%) Kibana
3 1 (1.41%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 4 (5.63%) Microsoft
2 2 (2.82%) Google
2 2 (2.82%) SAP
3 1 (1.41%) Databricks
3 1 (1.41%) ESRI
3 1 (1.41%) Informatica
3 1 (1.41%) Rapid7